


Narcissist, Give Us a Kiss

by toniwilder



Category: Tales of Symphonia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Rating May Change, Regal Bryant-centric, Slow Burn, Whump, Zelos Wilder-centric, did you know that tag didn't exist before today? because I didn't, poor regal, the entire party is in this in some way or another I just don't feel like clogging up tags, the is entirely self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 06:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29554608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toniwilder/pseuds/toniwilder
Summary: Regal nearly dies in the traps of the Tower of Salvation. Zelos is overcome with guilt.
Relationships: Regal Bryant/Zelos Wilder
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Narcissist, Give Us a Kiss

Regal hadn’t been to Flanoir in many years and, while the temperature of Meltokio couldn’t rival the constant wet heat of Altamira, he was woefully unprepared for the iced air and sporadic waves of snow. Call it extra bad luck when they arrived just as the sun had gone behind a cloud, leaving Regal feeling more exposed than usual as the chill danced across his skin.

Times like this Regal was flooded with gratitude that he stood in the back of their party and stayed largely unnoticed from the younger companions. The chill hit him outside of the doctor’s house and his shoulders shook suddenly in a way that felt like a mouse scampering down the nerves of his spine. He steadied immediately after, unnoticed aside from a knowing snort from Sheena and a lingering gaze from Zelos.

Regal raised his eyebrows and said nothing.

Unfortunately for Regal, Zelos wasn’t one to let anything slip without a comment.

The red head stepped behind Genis and Presea and motioned Regal to follow. As Regal drew closer, the light from inside the doctor’s office created shadow puppets made of Lloyd’s forest-line of hair, Colette’s ghostly sheet of a silhouette, and Raine’s geometric obelisk of hair points and caped shoulders. He stepped around their shadows and the snow crunch under his boots.

“C’mere,” Zelos urged, finally speaking.

Regal scrunched his nose.

“Where?”

He pointed across the street. In the wind, a sign that read ‘Kireina’ swayed.

“You don’t have your credits on you here. Let me buy you a coat, El Presidente. You’ll need it, even as insulated as you are.”

Zelos leaned over and tapped the part of Regal's upper stomach where his shirt convexed into pectoral muscles. Regal shuddered again, completely involuntary, and startled a laugh out of Zelos.

“Hurry hurry, Duke,” Zelos leaned over, hunching so the top of his red crown was practically two feet below the tip of Regal’s head. He rubbed his gloved hands up and down the sides of both of Regal’s biceps. Regal shivered again.

Regal squirmed away from Zelos’s grubby hands and charged forward into the snow and towards the store.

“He’s already turned to ice!” Zelos cried before scampering after.

When Zelos had straightened back to his full height, puffed chest and all, they were out of sight of the others. He slapped a hand on Regal’s back ever so briefly. More sincere and less played up than the groping and pouting.

Regal frowned. Usually Zelos was more subtle about his mood.

He quickened his pace on the steps of the porch, nearly slipping on his way up. Zelos came behind fast, slipped easily by Regal like he’d been born on the ice, and opened the door of the clothing shop with a deep bow.

On another day, Regal might have argued with the chivalry. In this case, when the heat from inside the shop hit his cheeks with such a strong gust that it felt as though the blood vessels in his cheeks had popped, Regal could only nod and continue forward into shelter.

Regal tapped his shoes on the coarse rug by the door so the snow would come off in clumps. Zelos’s feet soon joined the tiny symphony of _tap, sluff, tap sluff, tap tap sluff_ before he pointed forward to a hanging pole hanging across the opening filled with large, shapeless coats.

“Thar she blows,” Zelos hummed. His arm swung back down to his side. “I’ll find the shop keep. Tell’em I’ve got your coat paid.” His eyes were already halfway through scanning the room.

Regal saw a flash of a memory as Zelos’s gaze swept the perimeter. A little boy in a ballroom, alone in the corner and far worse at faking enjoyment than the man beside Regal now.

“You didn’t have to offer. I have some money.” From the shady jobs he’d done for Vharley, and whatever else he had been able to scrounge out of fights perhaps, but money all the same. “You should have stayed with Lloyd. Somebody will have to take the doctor to Altessa and we should be there when—”

“You weren’t giving me a hard time about this outside, if I remember right.” Zelos shined a cheshire grin at Regal. “Don’t worry about it. Besides, I know this doctor. He’ll want an escort and that’s more of Raine, Sheena, and Genis’s thing. He’s already known Sheena for a while anyway. Don’t have more Rheiards than that. Rest of us will have to stay behind.”

Regal shook his head.

“We should still be available.”

“They literally watched us walk down the streets. I yelled and they looked at us. We’re good, Duke-o.”

A grin bloomed across his face suddenly until Zelos’s white smile was tipped by two red halos on the corner of his mouth where his cheeks had gone raw from the snow outside.

“There she is. Hello, beautiful, do you own this store?”

Zelos’s voice entered the familiar lilt and pull of a man on a scandalous mission. The chosen practically fluttered away and towards the middle-aged woman who had paused with a large stack of hats in her arms. Her head tilted to one side, ear against shoulder, and her chin tipped up up up so she was staring from her tiny stature up at Zelos’s chili-pepper freckled, bright, smiling face.

He leaned down to scoop the hats from her arms and she practically fell forward. Between his bright red hair and the woman’s rounded blue coat with the background of the snow in the window behind them, the two looked like a strawberry and blueberry in a pile of yogurt.

Regal blinked. Maybe the cold was making him think a little weird.

He headed to the coats.

With a little maneuvering of his hands and cuffs (metal cuffs were not good for the arctic, he thought as the chains jingled light against the wood of the hangers), Regal pulled out a wool coat dyed a deep dark navy. He glanced over at Zelos, considered waiting for the okay, and shivered again.

Zelos laughed at something then, short and sparked like a gunshot, but Regal had already turned away from the scene so he could get to work shrugging the coat off its hanger. He felt like he was making good progress when he managed to get one unbutton loosened, only to hear Zelos snort behind him.

“I thought you’d have it on by now. Don’t you cook us food?” he taunted. Zelos shoved himself forward and made quick work of the second, third, fourth button. He lifted the coat up and oscillated his head so it looked like he was drawing a diagonal line in the air with his nose.

“Turn around.”

“What?”

Zelos rolled his eyes. “Your face is as blue as your hair. Just turn around so you can put the coat on.”

Regal frowned and did as ordered. Immediately the coat draped over his shoulders and his nerves splintered at the addition. He shivered again.

“Turn back around, I grabbed something else.”

His head was already shaking when Regal faced Zelos again. “You don’t have to—”

“Consider it an early apology present from me,” Zelos murmured. He was focused on Regals hands now and pulled them up by the metal of the chain linking his cuffs together. Zelos shook his head and scowled.

“You should have said something,” he lectured.

The sight was laughable. Zelos, the most repressed person on the planet, cursing under his breath because of somebody’s recklessness. Regal would have poked at that, but his brain had hooked and frozen onto something else.

“Apology?” Regal peered down at Zelos, like he might finally be able to see into that scrambled head one day if he just squinted hard enough. When he saw nothing, only that red strawberry hair and the way it made the shadows under Zelos’s eyes look more like blood and less like the purple of an old bruise, he continued. “Apology for what?”

Zelos’s smiled that bitter smile and Regal spotted himself in the other man. Years before when he was still entertaining what nobility thought the Bryant heir should be. Before he met, and lost, Alicia. A husk. Zelos's long fingers pulled a pair of fur lined gloves over Regal’s thick hand and Regal tightened his jaw to stop the shiver. The gloves covered his hands down past his wrist like a blacksmith’s soldering protectants down in the Altamira mines. Zelos gave the ends a tug to make sure they were on securely before pulling the cuffs over the leather so the metal no longer touched skin. Mana spread over the bruises and frost on his arms as Zelos healed him.

“Zelos, what do you mean apology?” Regal pressed.

“You know me.” Zelos shrugged. “I’m sure if there’s not something to apologize for now, there probably will be later.”

He grinned and added, “I can take it back, you know.”

Regal shook his head decisively. “I don’t give back apologies or gloves so I’m afraid I’ll just have to hold you to it.”

Despite what Regal thought was a pretty good joke, Zelos’s smile faded. Not by much, but enough that Regal spotted it.

“Zelos.” Regal put his hand of Zelos’s shoulder and the smile disintegrated. Zelos’s eyes, iced like the city, stared up at him. Pleaded.

What did Zelos have to plead about?

“Are you okay?” Regal asked.

“I am sorry,” Zelos repeated. “I am not a perfect person I get that. So, I’m just saying. I’m sorry.”

Regal reached out and Zelos turned, brisk and tapping like a faeries’ dance across the shop and towards the door.

“Let’s get back to Lloyd and go to our rooms.” He placed both hands behind his head and strolled out of the shop with a sing-song, “I’m beeeeeat~!” and a gentle bell ring of the door shutting behind him.

Regal tugged the gloves, needless since Zelos had put them on so delicately and purposely, and stared after Zelos long after the wooden door obscured him from view.

That look though. That child’s prayer stare like Regal held exactly what Zelos needed to live and was cursed not to tell him what it was.

He left the shop with the unshakeable feeling that he had failed a test.

* * *

Lloyd called him a traitor. All things considered, Zelos had expected a lot worst. It still hurt, absolutely, but it was absolute. Zelos could work with absolutes.

He turned when Regal stepped forward from behind Raine, behind everybody, always protecting everybody’s backs. Such a loyal, honorable man.

Sheena charged forward, shot him with arrows laced with the poison of her faith in him, and he laughed.

“In the end, I choose this side.”

Zelos showed him his back so he wouldn’t ruin a good thing while they still had it.

“Because Mithos promised to release me from my fate as a chosen of mana.”

Then Regal ruined it. He could have let them keep their last conversation authentic.

“You hate being the Chosen so much that you would betray your friends?”

Zelos doubled down and filled his heart with hurt so he could reply with venom. He was running so low on venom with them. With Regal.

But still, he found some. Remembered Regal at the parties with the other nobles. He was the same as them. Everybody was the same as each other.

“Oh yeah I do. It’s because of that title that my life has been a total joke. I can’t stand it.” He sneered when he tasted the lie coming up his throat. “I can’t wait for Seles to become the Chosen instead.”

Lloyd cried, “You’re the one that told me I could trust you!”

Zelos lied, called him stupid, and felt something like bile in the words.

He went up and left with Pronyma with one last look over his shoulder at the friends he left behind.

He didn’t see Regal again until he went backwards from the core of the tower where the traps were. Each one was designed, with intel from Zelos himself, on what would stop each person in their tracks. Zelos withheld the juicy stuff—can’t give Mithos every advantage—and watched the traps as they were built. He told Genis, Presea, Raine, and Sheena to hurry on ahead at the final fork. They would go to Lloyd and Zelos would bring Regal back to the fray in time for their grand entrance which would distract everybody long enough for Zelos to make a grab for the aionis.

Zelos ran to the mouth of the cathedral hall where Regal’s trap awaited. It had been a simple design, simply focusing on airborne enemies that Regal wouldn’t be able to rely upon his kicks to defeat. He didn’t tell Mithos that Regal was trained in hand to hand, that Regal would use those attacks if provoked enough as proved back in the cell. Those were the juicy things Mithos just had to find out on his own.

Stone blocked the entrance and Zelos took a hard left to one of the side doors. When he heard the crash, he ran faster, and when he saw the billow of dust whip out with a force so strong it took the wooden door off its hinges, Zelos used his mana to propel him forward so his feet barely seemed to touch the ground.

The room was quiet with only the echo of the collapse. Zelos’s eyes darted over every detail, every terrible bit of broken stone and blood. Most of the damage had been contained to the bottom of the cathedral which had lead to whatever sort of collapse had occurred.

“Regal?!” Zelos yelled.

No answer. Zelos’s heart plummeted to the floor. He forced his feet forward.

“ _Regal!_ ”

Then he saw those stupid handcuffs sticking out from under the rubble. A chill ran down his spine like they were back in Flanoir all over again. The hand in the cuffs was completely red from blood except for where it was tinged black from the explosion Regal had created and brown from the dust of the smoke.

Zelos dropped to his knees and grabbed the largest piece of stone first. He threw it back over his shoulder and went for the next stone. The hand moved in Zelos’s peripheral. Reached for him.

“I said I was sorry, I already said I was sorry,” Zelos stammered. He pulled a stone made of more edges than any shape Zelos learned in geometry, and froze when Regal’s breath came in a gust so hoarse it sounded like radio static.

“I’m sorry,” Zelos said again. He lifted another stone, using mana to help lift the wind underneath Zelos’s fingers and throw the rocks to the side. Zelos felt Regal’s hair before he saw it. This far into the pile it looked only like the layer of dust that had coated Regal in the collapse. Zelos leaned forward and grabbed Regal by the shoulders to lift him out of the crater he’d made.

Regal made no sound and, even as an angel, Zelos could feel 100% of Regal’s dead weight in his arms. He pulled him aside and flopped Regal onto his back so he could investigate the damage and noted the blood was above the dust, the wounds fresh from the collapse instead of the battle.

The blood coated Regal's hands because the blood was coming from the legs, pooling underneath them clumping with the dirt and sand from the broken pillars. A crushed thigh bone, and a matching smashed kneecap, never mind the rest of the damage hiding under the blood and dust. Zelos put his hand to Regal’s throat and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

The pulse came and Zelos let out the breath he’d been holding. It was weak, weaker than anything Zelos had ever dealt with before. He put his hand on Regal’s exphere and healed him.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Zelos shook his head back and forth. “I’m sorry. I’ll get you out of here. I promise.”

He healed him until Lloyd and the others came. Ragged from their battle, but alive and together. Sheena put her hands on Zelos and pulled him up from Regal’s body. Zelos stood well for a second, until his knees buckled and took them down.

“I’ve found him as soon as it happened,” Zelos said, “I was going to help with Mithos but I couldn’t—I couldn’t leave h-him.” He turned to Sheena, her eyes wet and scrunched together with fat tears. “I was going to help, I’m not lying about that—”

“Shh!” Raine hissed sharply, eyes shut as she hunched over Regal. Her hands shook over him, exhausted from their battle most likely. The battle Zelos threw them into.

Zelos turned back to Sheena, then to Lloyd who was staring at him now. “I told him I was sorry. I thought--… I mean I know it’s not… I--…”

Regal coughed on the ground and Genis stumbled back from his sister’s side. Blood red like strawberry wine splashed onto the snow—

Zelos gasped for breath that didn’t fill his lungs and when he let it free, he trembled.

Not snow.

Dust.

“Shh,” Sheena whispered, even though her placation was soft under the ringing in his ears, the white vision of his blood rising in his veins so everything was white except that red.

Zelos leaned forward and put his hands on Regal’s chest and summoned all the mana in his body. Colette suddenly curled into his side, her fingers wrapped around his as she helped in her own way.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“It’s okay,” Colette’s voice matched his. She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. “We forgive you.”

Zelos shook his head until Colette pulled him close and let his head press into her shoulder. He should have felt safe. He should have felt able to cry.

But her grasp was too tight, too distracting, and he shook his head. “Stop,” he put his hands over Regal again, “It’s not about me. I need him to say it. I need him to forgive me.”

When Colette said his name, it was a bargain.

“Zelos.”

“I need him to say it.”

Zelos gritted his teeth and ignored Sheena and Genis’s sniffling.

Regal came back to life quietly, with his eyelids fluttering open to look pass Raine, Zelos, Colette and Lloyd. Zelos followed his eyes and saw Presea, stoic like the mountains except for the tears building trails on her face.

“Alicia,” Regal croaked and shut his eyes.

Zelos shook his head. “Bastard thinks he’s going to see Alicia now? I don’t think so.”

“Yeah,” Lloyd weakly supplied. “Yeah,” this time stronger. “You guys can do this. You can do this.”

Raine looked at Zelos over the bulk of Regal’s collapsed body.

“You can do this?” The question was evenly delivered that Zelos almost missed the question mark at the end.

Zelos nodded.

“I can do this.”

**Author's Note:**

> A slow burn Zegal fic in 2020? Whoops.
> 
> Title from Why Do You Love Me? By Charlotte Lawrence.


End file.
